The Small Moments
by Dana Woods
Summary: Somewhere in between being "just the messenger" but before becoming the "hero", Doyle does some thinking.


"The Small Moments" By Dana Woods, Rated PG13 for some language.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.  
  
A/N: Written for the Lyric Wheel Season One theme. The story had to be set in season one of either Angel or Buffy. I chose Angel. Thanks to Andrew for the lyrics to Graveyard Nights (found at the end).  
  
***  
  
On the afternoons when he wakes up with a pounding head and heaving stomach, lurching to the toilet to piss or vomit (sometimes pissing in the bowl with his head craned to the side to puke in the sink, or vice versa), Doyle knows that there is something cruel in that old saying. The one about God looking out for drunks and fools. Because on really bad afternoons (when he is pissing and hurling simultaneously into a single receptacle) he considers himself both, and he knows it's not benevolence that has God making sure he doesn't get whacked despite the way he tempts it in all ways.  
  
No, it's a matter of giving him enough rope to hang himself. Keep him unkilled by all of his enemies so that one day down the line he can feel guilty about how he wasted his life. So that he can cry at the injustice of some pretty young thing cut down by one of his drinking buddies and walking around so scarred that she could make time in a demon haunt and not be identified as human, while he managed to stumble/lurch/piss/vomit his way out of one close call after another that he brought on himself.  
  
Yeah, he's much more a believer in that saying about how gods (little g for that one, like a good little former-catholic, even though there's plenty of present-catholic left in anyone who thinks they're a former-catholic), how gods like to send people they want to kill all twisted and touched in the brain first. Oh, that one's truer than true.  
  
Take the visions. Hurt like hell (only capital H for the place; little h for using it in a way that got sister Mary Margaret bloodying his knuckles with a ruler and maybe he's not so much a former-anything as a current- dipshit). Visions are his penance, right? To make up for clinging protectively to his miserable drunken existence and not helping someone who needed it. Something poetic about the fact that the only thing'll ease the pain is close to a liter of bad whiskey. Good whiskey would work just as well, probably better, but it costs more green than he's willing to shell out.  
  
Plus, there's something sacrilegious about using the good stuff as a glorified aspirin. Nothing catholic about that sentiment; it's pure Irish, is what it is.  
  
It's like saying, "Hey, shame on you for having a cavity, now let me give you this condition that requires you to eat lots of sugary food." All kinds of twisted and touched. Especially because he thinks that the reality of what he didn't do would've been his rock bottom, the lowest denominator of being a prick that woulda made him give up the bottle. Thinks they stole sobriety and clean living away from him by saddling him with the vision. They probably didn't, but it's a nice thought.  
  
Then they give him this mission. They shove him at Angel and tell him to make the vamp more people-friendly. Tell him to help Angel be a champion, a hero. And that's all well and good, really. World needs more heroes. A lot more heroes. But lately he's noticing that this hero thing to be contagious, and that's all unwell and bad.  
  
He sticks with Cordy because, besides the fact that she is a stiffener of just lovely proportions, she isn't a hero. No, she's like him, right? Leaving Angel in his hero's lair each night to return to her own world. But the lair seems to have shifting boundaries and Doyle's finding it harder and harder to find his way back to his own world.  
  
He has a theory about why that is. Got to thinking about it when he stumbled passed St. Bernadette's like a drunken louse one night.  
  
When he was young, his ma would drag him by the ear to confession to admit his sins to Father Kilpatrick. The good Father would assign him penance and then absolve him. And it makes sense, doesn't it? It's not enough to feel bad, or spill your guts, or even to be absolved. You've got to do the work to make it right for yourself. And if he still believes this (which he does, because there really is no such thing as a former-catholic), then the visions can't be *penance*, because he's never gotten over the guilt enough to actually sit down and regret what he didn't do.  
  
Looking at it that way, the visions are his *path* to penance and maybe it's not enough to just pass on the information and make a hasty exit before the shit hits the fan. Maybe it's time for him to regret, and say his hail marys and rosaries and our fathers until his throat is raw and his fingers are callused from fingering the beads (and it's a deliberate lower case, because he really wishes there were such a thing as a former- catholic).  
  
Sounds thrilling and romantic and fantastic, all this hero crap. But Doyle knows better. He knows what happens to heroes. Used to be a teacher, and even elementary school teachers have to take a literature course or two. Heroes die. Tragically. Usually after some stunning moment of clarity/acceptance of their fate. It's a well-documented fact.  
  
That's not the death for him, though, is it? Nah, he's more suited to slipping in the bathroom and cracking his head open thirty years from now, a sad situation of his feet going out from under him while he's trying to puke and piss at the same time. A fitting death, when he thinks about it. But there are times--in that lull between sobriety and drunkenness--when he wonders if maybe he actually *wants* the hero death, wants to be worthy of it.  
  
He doesn't want to die at all, even though he hasn't done much living since his spiny side showed up. Doesn't really want to live either, not the kind of living that's more than just skirting the edges and lurching to the toilet. Maybe that's why he courts death but runs it when it comes for him. Kinda like getting a bull all pissed off and then running through the city streets. Like...like those fools that go to Pamplona. Yeah, just like them.  
  
He's a fool who's bound to get rammed up the arse by a horny bull. Disturbing imagery aside, it's the truth of the matter. Or, it had been. Nowadays, he's not so sure what the fuck is going on.  
  
And Angel doesn't help. Okay, okay, the role he has to play for Angel doesn't help lessen the confusion. Not even a little. Because the times when he's spouting the sage words and inspiring rhetoric? Those times, he feels like a god (emphasis on the little g, and it doesn't stir up his catholic guilty because Mercury was the messenger god, and it's too perfect not to consider when he's waxing smart for Angel). But the rest of he feels like he's just a little boy who doesn't know shit about shit, and should pull up his pants.  
  
Maybe he'll just have himself a doozy of a midlife crisis and buy a car that makes women think he has a small...or, maybe he'll skip the car bit and just go straight to making time with stiffeners half his age. Except that he's pretty young and that'd be disgusting....  
  
Shit. Maybe he'll just skip it all except the part where he figures out who he is.  
  
That'd be nice. It's a little tiring to jump from helping Angel do some noble helping of the hopeless and being half-convinced he'll end a tried and true hero, to the aftermath of yet another bathroom double-team where he stares at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror while he cleans out the sink and figures himself a wastrel when all is said and done.  
  
But those are extreme moments, aren't they? Dramatic, really, and in general life isn't about the big, huge moments. It's about the small, seemingly unimportant moments that can last instants or hours. Because those are what influence how you are in the big moments.  
  
Like when he's slept half the day away, and Cordelia calls to leave loud messages on his machine telling him to get his drunk Irish ass into the office. When he doesn't answer, she switches to a reluctantly worried tone and demands that he pick up the phone and tell her if he's dead. Then she thrusts the receiver at Angel and tells him to make Doyle answer. A stilted and awkward Angel then threatens to come over and knock his door down if he isn't in the office in half an hour. And a haughty Cordelia calls out in the background that he better make sure he showers first.  
  
Or when he's puffed up after doing good. Cordelia unfailingly makes some comment about his taste in clothes, and manages to curl her lip at him without curling her lip--a talent belonging only to pure snobs, he's decided. Angel tries to get them to leave without asking them to leave, but Cordy convinces him that eggs are deserved. They trudge downstairs and Angel pretends to begrudge them breakfast, but they know that he's pleased he can do this for them. Even more pleased that they *want* him to do it for them. Cordelia scoffs that eggs are "common" and makes like she didn't practically beg for them, and they stick Angel with the clean up every time and he never really minds.  
  
In those moments, those small moments, he knows that the figures'll add up to a little from column a, and a little from column b.  
  
And no one can really ask for more than that.  
  
***  
  
"Graveyard Nights"  
  
by Jenny Labow  
  
from the album _Flourish_  
  
he said sometimes I feel like I'm a god  
  
and then again sometimes I feel like  
  
I am just a little boy  
  
sometimes I feel like I'm an outlaw  
  
shooting off my guns  
  
and robbing everybody's heart  
  
this time I've got a good feeling  
  
like someone opened up the door  
  
and finally let me in  
  
but when it's cold like this  
  
I feel like giving up  
  
when luck and restlessness  
  
don't answer me  
  
don't seem to be enough  
  
there are still walls around me  
  
still things that you can't see  
  
these lonely nights have bound me  
  
to beating hearts and strings  
  
if I could leave this room now  
  
I'd walk a long way  
  
into a sunny season  
  
another sunny day  
  
and you want to let me in  
  
but I've been building and stacking  
  
up these bricks  
  
until they fall onto the the heart of me  
  
crush the very soul of my desire  
  
so emptiness is safer for awhile  
  
cause even if I had you  
  
I could die from your embrace  
  
and the memory of your face  
  
and when it's cold like this  
  
I feel like giving up  
  
when luck and restlessness  
  
don't answer me  
  
don't seem to be enough  
  
there are still walls around me  
  
still things that you can't see  
  
these lonely nights have bound me  
  
to beating hearts and strings  
  
if I could leave this room now  
  
I'd walk a long way  
  
into a sunny season  
  
another sunny day  
  
but you're too strong  
  
how can I hold you  
  
you're too strong  
  
I can't get my arms around you  
  
you're too strong  
  
how can I hold you  
  
you're too strong for that  
  
so I'll just walk away  
  
flesh divides  
  
rectify  
  
these deaths I've died 


End file.
